


Kellen: Find a Bargain

by necrosweater



Series: OneAM-Bound [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Implied abuse, Slave Trade, There's absolutely nothing in Kellen's Basement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrosweater/pseuds/necrosweater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kellen finds a sweet deal at the flea market.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kellen: Find a Bargain

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of an ongoing series. Said series also involves a large amount of stupid comics, as can be found at http://oneamcomics.tumblr.com .  
> Enjoy, or don't. The choice is yours.

Crowds. The first things you notice are the swarms of trolls packed like sardines into every available foot of ground. Highbloods, lowbloods, even the occasional seadweller as yourself. No one that you’ve seen is quite as high as you are, however, and you fully intend to use that fact to your advantage. ‘Abusing your privileges’ is such a negative phrase.  
  
There are so many trolls… so many lovely, beautifully rich colours. Your fingers twitch at the thought of releasing those wonderful hues from their fleshy prisons, drawing them out with a needle and dropping the lovingly onto a brush. That pleasant rusty-coppertone would be perfect for your lips, you think, licking them absently. The violet you’ve got on right now is a fresh blend you’d mixed right before leaving, and your shoulder still feels a bit stiff, like always after a bloodletting. You catch sight of the colour in the shiny surface of some vendor’s wares and show a few of your fearsome teeth in a smile. Mixing your violet with that red had given it just the right amount of pop. Your face is flawless…as always. After an…event several weeks ago, not one troll questions the presence of makeup on the face of a not quite four sweep old seadweller.  
  
This isn’t the first time in your young life that you’ve been to the flea market in the founds near your hive, but this time you’re here with a purpose: your basement has an opening after an unfortunate incident which resulted in not enough of the delightful green you’d been using in a mix for your nails, and no way of getting more. Sometimes the slaver who had control of this region had an admirable collection, and your good friend Jasaya had agreed to meet you and go shopping.  
  
Speaking of, there she was now, pursing her lips and pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose while searching though the stories in a book-vendor’s stall. Her jade-lacquered fingers pound a rhythm on her knitted bookbag and you fight the urge to shake her out of her thoughts with a tug on one of those elegantly slanting horns. Something tells you that would be ill advised, so you settle for tapping her on the shoulder. Of course, you do it on the side you aren’t standing on, and you cackle loudly as she turns your direction anyway. Jas knows you too well.  
  
“Water ya lookin at, hmm?” you drawl after she’s done glaring at you. Her face lifts at that and your heart warms as you realize you know the answer before she even says it: “Fairy tales.” The two of you have had a passion for stories of the fey for as long as you each could remember. You’d actually met in an online forum on the topic of finding the originals from the Troll Grimm Brothers, before they were changed by multiple retellings.  
  
“I haven’t found anything really specblackular, though,” you both wince at the attempted pun. “Okay… ‘specblackular’ filed away under the ‘failed colour puns’ pile. How about you? Find any grayt deals?” You shake your head, giggling over her over-pronunciation of the first syllable.  
  
“No, but I’m aboat to check the Trade over there. Come with me and I might,” you pause, tapping one of your slender gray fingers over her cute button nose, “let you help me pick a colour. If we’re reely lucky there cod be a buoy-one-get-one deal going on!” The two of you squeak in juvenile excitement at the thought of a day of shopping, dropping your books unceremoniously. The thunk of the hardcovers on the crates surrounding the stall earns the attention of the oliveblood vendor, who looks about to say something, but wisely checks his tongue after glimpsing your fins. He sighs defeatedly and gets back to taking stock in the back wall of his shop. You laugh, flipping your hair and grabbing your friends hand to drag her through the droves of your fellow shoppers. Being a seadweller is, as Miss Lawter would put it, grayt.  
  


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As always, the crowd thickens considerably the closer you get to the Trader’s Booth, or the Trade as regulars call it. You puff yourself up to your tallest height, glubbing indignantly. The sound (impossible for all but the most talented landdwellers to replicate) gets the attention of most of the lowbloods in front of you and once again you find everyone parting around you like the Blind Prophets’ proverbial R4D S34. You don’t spare anyone a second glance as you stride confidently to the front of the crowd, a thrilled Jasaya in tow.

“What’s new, kiddo?” the big blue who co-runs the Trade asks with a wink. You’ve dealt with each other many a time in the past, and he knew more than many what your tastes were, though he still didn’t know exactly what such a young troll was buying so many slaves for. You thought maybe he didn’t want to know, and you were perfectly happy with that. Your relationship was strictly business, and that was exactly how you intended to keep it… well, after you made him squirm a bit.

“You gave me a bad deal, Al.” The fact that you’re not even four sweeps old doesn’t make your displeasure any less threatening. “Leafblood I bought last perigree went belly-up already, what gives? Right in the middle of a beach, Al. Do you know, Al, how many caegars it takes to start a mix over?” Your incessant use of his name is making him nervous, you can tell. He’s sweating a bit, so you level it out by smiling sweetly, tilting your head and smoothing your fluffy skirts. Picture of innocence, you are. “I need a new green, as close to that shade as possible, otherwise you might be facing some stormy seas up ahead.” You reach for the chain around your neck and draw out the pendant with your sign and the small vial you’d filled while that lousy green had gasped it’s last breaths. Al looks tensely at you and you detach the vial, tossing it vaguely in his direction. You know it doesn’t matter how far from him you aim, at this point the blue would catch it wherever your careless throw landed.

“W-we’ve got, um, quite a wide selection, uh tonight…” Al stammers lamely. It’s almost endearing how quickly you’ve been able to bend this near adult to your will. Al leads you to the separate side of the Trade’s stall where they keep the trolls who haven’t yet been up to block. To your dismay (and also apparently Al’s, if his perspiration level is anything to base judgement on) there are no greens currently on stock. You see Al’s partner in trade, Vin sitting on an upturned crate, writing notes on a clipboard.

“Hey, budgie!” You croon, clapping the cerulean on the shoulder, swiping his cigarette effortlessly. He doesn’t react, more at ease with your coarse nature. Vin’s a bit less easy to shake than Al, and therefore more fun to deal with. “I’ll fillet you in on my problem.” You take a drag, managing to hide your cough, which Vin ignores anyway, knowing you’re only trying to establish dominance. He’s a well seasoned slavetrader, and knows how to pacify the more… pushy buyers, such as yourself. He gets down to business, swallowing once at the lack of greens but regaining composure in commendable time.

He shows you the stock while you explain your plight. A four and a half sweep old teal girl, bit too blue for your tastes, but well worth the caegars she’s up for. A scrawny looking yellow psionic with blockers on and a nasty looking bandage covering part of his face, seemingly about your age that’s sparking nervously in his cage, and a few more lowbloods who don’t even catch your interest. Vin glances at you, noting how unimpressed you are.

“We had a few greens earlier, but they’re in high demand right now; we ended up putting them on the block right away. Sorry, hon, I know this means a lot to you. If it’s any consolation, this one here is quite the bargain. His owner dumped him off on me a few days back, said he kept clawing up the furniture. Now, I don’t know much about your…” he pauses here, gesturing with his hands as he’s trying to find a suitably neutral word. “…Operation, and I don’t really think I want to, but I have a strong feeling that this wouldn’t be an issue for you.” You bounce excitedly after Vin over to the cage, and giggle as he reaches in, coughing out a rather unladylike laugh when the small troll inside bites him. “GODDAMNIT!” Vin roars. If you weren’t so sure he wasn’t yelling at you, you might be afraid. As it is though you just snort as he backhands the little guy and drags him out, propping his almost unconscious body against the cage door. You’ve got to give the lowblood credit, he’s just been clobbered by a blueblood, he’s stuck in psion-blockers, and he’s still clinging to wakefulness. He might be worth Vin’s price, yet. You reach out and slice at his arm with your claw, drawing a bit of blood. You decide you like this colour. Glancing up at Vin, you smirk and ask quietly, “how much?”

His answer is shockingly low, and you guess this kid’s problems must be more than he’s telling you. Oh well, not like the basement’s gonna complain. You saunter over to Jasaya, a few hundred caegars lighter, with a receipt for one ridiculously cheap yellowblooded troll to be delivered to your hive later that night. You grin at Jasaya and say “I’m feeling lucky, let’s find another bargain.”


End file.
